Latvia Freezes $500,000 of Assets in Magnitsky Case Probe

(Bloomberg) -- Latvian police froze bank accounts and real estate worth about $500,000 as part of an investigation into transactions related to the tax fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in a Moscow prison.

Two pieces of real estate purchased through a Cyprus bank account and another bank account that belonged to the wife of a former member of the Russian parliament that was used to sell a yacht were frozen, Latvian police said on their Facebook page. Latvia opened the case in 2012 after a complaint from Hermitage Capital Management, the firm that Magnitsky advised.

The Baltic country has stepped up investigations into financial crimes, strengthened oversight and boosted fines since its third-biggest bank was accused of money laundering by the U.S. Treasury in 2018. The government’s crackdown has already seen some success, when it avoided inclusion in a list of jurisdictions that fail to punish money laundering last month.

Law enforcement worked with the Baltic nation’s bank regulator and other unidentified countries to investigate the transactions, the police said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Eglitis in Riga at aeglitis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Andrew Langley

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